bach Publishing Company, producers of an online source for rail-related information, where you can discover model trains, toy trains, garden trains and even real trains.

(Horn) The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturer's Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music Spencer: Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll look at a restored portion of the old Sacramento Northern Railroad that was in operation for 47 years in central California.

We'll visit with a Colorado artist whose passions for photography and painting are carried over into his layout, and visit one of the largest home model railroad layouts around.

The Rugenish Kleinbahn is a narrow gauge operation serving the resort area of Rugen Island in Germany.

Once part of the DDR, it's restored tank locomotives and scenic ride make it a definite tourist destination.

Ancr: Rugen Island sits in the Baltic Sea off the northern coast of Germany.

At 350 square miles, it is Germany's largest island.

For more than one-hundred years, it has also been one of its' most popular tourist destinations.

A one-and-a-half mile long bridge separates the island from mainland Germany.

People come for the rejuvenating powers of the air and water.

And, they come for the beauty.

The primary attractions are still the sparkling sand beaches which offer solitude and relaxation.

The stunning white limestone-like salt cliffs carved by nature out of the island's eastern shore over millions of years.

Impressive architecture fronting the luxurious resort hotels and spa's which have attracted visitors for generations.

And, of course, the century old Rugen Railway, offering visitors and residents an historical experience that is becoming increasingly rare in both Europe and across the world.

Music Music Music Music Music Ancr: Since the line was privatized in the 1990's, it has become even more of a polished attraction to those visiting the island.

It runs from one resort town to the next and past some of the most beautiful sights the island has to offer.

It's a narrow gauge steam blowing family attraction.

It is constantly under restoration.

And each of the locomotives has a story to tell.as do the employees who worked them.

Jochen: In the Prussian State they had a special railroad law which simply made it easier for local communities to build narrow gauge railroads.

And, it was only about a third of the cost compared to building a standard gauge railroad.

So, it was a cheap way to build.

The right-of-way had only sand and gravel, and they used nails to fix the rails instead of screws.

So, they could build the lines very fast and cheap.

And, you could build tight curves which allowed you to build spurs to private customers at almost any location.

So even a lot of the farmers got their own spurs.

We have a lot of special stories, but one of the most interesting in from a particularly hard winter.

We always have strong winds on the island, even in winter, and that causes some pretty high snow drifts.

Back in the winter of 1978-79 we had snow drifts over three meters high, which means that the snow drifts were higher than the locomotives.

And, one of the trains which ran between Serams and Binz was stopped by a drift.

We needed a thousand people to go there and just dig out the train.

We started digging at the roof of the locomotive.

We worked so hard and got so warm that we had to take off our wool and cotton jackets and hang them on top of the light poles.

That's how high the snow was.

So high that we stood close to the top of the poles.

The roof of the train was even with the top of the snow drift.

Walter: Well, I bought this engine back in 1980.

It was built before the second world war for the German army.

It was in service with the army in Russia.

It survived being in Russia, and then after the war it came down to Austria.

There it was in service for 32 years along three different state lines.

Jochen: After World War Two the German Railroad, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, or DR, operated this narrow gauge until it was given back to the former owner, the county, and that was in 1996.

The DR used the most modern locomotives of the former private Ruegensche Kleinbahn, the Vulcans, from 1914 and 1923.

In 1965 the DR brought two very modern Henschel steam locomotives from a closed narrow gauge railroad here to Rugen.

In the 1980's three big 2-10-2 type 7K's were brought from Saxony to Rugen.

They were really much too big for Rugen, but at that time the DR only had these locomotives to upgrade the rolling stock here.

In the past twenty years, everyone of us on the staff learned to run these locomotives.

We had to.

And today, they are still the work horses here, especially in our busy season.

Altogether, there are seven steam locomotives here which are owned by Ruegensche Kleinbahn, and two more are rented.

And, we have two diesel locomotives as well.

One of them is extremely rare.

It had been built in World War Two for military service.

service.

Herman: We had a narrow gauge railroad in my hometown, so I had been very familiar with narrow gauge ever since I was a young child.

And, I guess, what you like as a child, you probably will like as an adult as well.

My big love are the narrow gauges, just exactly like the one in my hometown where I grew up.

So, I'm a big rail fan to begin with, and I'm especially interested in narrow gauge railroads.

Then, here in Rugen, a lifelong dream came true, to have my very own narrow gauge railroad.

I have lots of fun and the employees all really work so hard to satisfy our visitors.

I do hope that lots of people will come to Rugen Island and to this railroad.

It really does make me happy.

My main job is being publisher of a model railroad magazine, Modelleisnebahner, and now I'm running this real railroad too.

So, isn't that the best situation of all?

To be able to combine your hobby with you business.

Music Music Music Music Ancr: The Rugen Island Railroad will put you right on track to a simpler time, in a beautiful place.

All you have to do is enjoy it.

Spencer: The Rugen Island area is not very well known in the west, and is a definite tourist stop if you are headed for northern Germany.

Next we're headed to Pennsylvania to visit one of the world's largest home layouts.

See how many of the 1800 cars you can count as they weave through the Allegany Mountains.

Ancr: When it comes to model railroading, does size matter?

It does if you want to run a truly operational prototypical layout.

Ken McCorry's HO-scale layout has been called the world's largest home layout.and that was back in 1998, before he added yet another 700 square feet to it.

The additional space allowed him to model the Harrisburg Terminal at the southern end of the Buffalo line.

Although it was always a multi-level railroad -- with the main grade from the upper to lower level running over the Allegheny Mountains -- the grade is now much longer.

The old summit was 64 inches high and the new one is over 75 inches high.

This monumental layout is the result of years of work and experimentation.

Ken used to build layout after layout only to tear them down after a just few years or even a few months because he got bored.

But when he met Charlie Carangi in 1978 all that changed.

Ken: I heard about operations on other railroads but never got to visit.

And Charlie had an open house in 1978 and I visited his railroad and during the open house got invited back for an operations.

It really changed my outlook on the hobby.

With operations it was more of build a railroad for a purpose and operate it for a longer period of time.

It's cheaper, you don't have to go through building materials and also learning history of the area you're modeling, the era.

Vehicles, buildings, signs, rolling stock.

Ancr: Ken's favorite steam engine, the Pennsy I-1, led him to model the Central Region/Northern Division in Central Pennsylvania.

Ken: I modeled the Pennsylvania Railroad from about 1981 til 1994.

And after painting Brunswick Green, which was a fairly boring color, did a couple of Conrail units for a friend of mine and really liked the bright blue.

And we also realized that I knew a lot more about the operations of Conrail on the Buffalo line than I did the Pennsylvania Railroad.

So I decided to make the switch to the Conrail era which is the 1979 to 1982 era.

Ancr: This layout wouldn't look like Central Pennsylvania without a steel mill and Ken made sure he did this one up right: it's about 3 feet wide and 120 feet long, taking up 300 square feet.

Ken: My favorite spot on the railroad is probably the steel mill.

The number of hours that I put into building two blast furnaces.

It has the heavy industrial look of central Pennsylvania and I think it succeeded.

Ancr: This successful layout boasts over 230 locomotives and 1800 cars!

Ken had to count them for insurance purposes and to keep track of his numbering system.

He has no idea how many turnouts are on the layout.

Everything is housed on the second floor of this barn, which was built specifically for the huge train room.

Ken: Initial construction of the railroad, we did a lot of construction at night.

And there were usually 6 to 8 cars parked outside.

The upper floor of the barn has no windows so there's no lights.

That night we were doing some track painting so I had opened a door at the back of the barn to allow some fresh air in.

The police drove by and saw this light where they hadn't seen a light before and they had also been curious as to what was going on in the barn.

They had this large building, they had a number of cars parked outside at night with no people around.

So that evening the local chief of police stopped by, knocked on the door.

One of the crew members was downstairs and he came up and found out what was up here.

And now he and a number of the other people on the local police force actually come to our open houses in November.

Ancr: Ken not only credits his friends for helping him build his layout, but also for creating the scenery.

There are out 16,000 trees here, another component that was critical to making the layout look like Central Pennsylvania.

Operating the layout is also a friendly affair.

Ken gets about 25 friends together about once a month for a full operating session.

Ken says there's enough on this railroad to keep him interested now.and seeing everything this layout has to offer, that's no surprise.

Spencer: As with all model railroads, Ken say's that this one will never be completed.

He is already planning to expand.

In a moment, we'll head to Colorado to visit Mike Danneman.

Mike is one of the few people who gets to enjoy trains both as a hobby and through his professional life as a photographer and illustrator.

But first let's got to central California where a section of the historic Sacramento Northern Railroad has been preserved at the Western Railway Museum.

Ancr: Could this be a mirage?

Are we really seeing quaint electric trains traveling across the open prairie?

How is it that these folks find themselves riding on an electric interurban train that hasn't operated in its original setting for over 50 years?

And just where did this old trolley come from?

The wonderful time machine that has transported us so vividly into the past is the Western Railway Museum, located in Northern California's Solano County.

This magnificent museum gives visitors the opportunity to ride historic streetcars and interurban electric trains meticulously restored to their original condition.

Phil: The museum's purpose is to preserve the history of the electric railroad era.

We preserve railcars, documents, all sort of corporate histories, anything that has to do with electric railroading.

We like to focus our efforts on Northern California and on the western United States.

Certainly I think the most compelling exhibit that we have is the demonstration ride that we give.

We are a living museum and we actually operate the historic equipment that we've restored.

In addition to offering a 10 mile round trip on the old Sacramento Northern Railway every hour on the hour that we're open, we also on the weekends offer shorter streetcar trips which are about a mile and a half and take twenty minutes.

They're a nice introduction to the museum.

Both trips loop around our shaded picnic ground and our park and go down a tail track which parallels the old Sacramento Northern Railway.

In addition to the demonstration ride that we offer, we've also restored approximately 25 of the 100 cars in our collection.

So those are on display for the public to walk through.

The line that we've been able to save and preserve is the old Sacramento Northern line, which came out of the merger of two separate companies, the Northern Electric, which served from Chico to Sacramento, and the Oakland, Antioch and Eastern which went from Sacramento to Oakland and then by ferry to San Francisco.

One of the very many interesting things about the Sacramento Northern Railway is that, here in the Bay area, we have a number of rivers and large bodies of water that you need to cross to have a direct connection between cities.

The Sacramento Northern solved this problem by creating a gas powered ferry engine where they would actually take the trains coming from either Sacramento or from San Francisco Oakland, load them onto a ferry, take the ferryboat across the confluence of the Sacramento River and Suisun Bay.

Offload the train, and then it would speed on it's way at 70 miles per hour through Solano County.

Ancr: A descendant of railroad workers, Phil has been a train aficionado all his life.

It's not hard to sense just how he feels about the importance of the museum's mission.

Phil: I feel very good about the work we do here.

I feel that it's very important that we preserve history for the purpose of being able to learn from it.

Conductor: Well, I'll tell you something about this line we're about to switch onto here.

Used to be the old Sacramento Northern ran fast interurban electric trains from Oakland up through Contra Costa County and up here all the way to Sacramento and up to Chico.

Phil: Museum's in general have the purpose of providing connections with people, between each other with their past and with their future.

I think that's one of the things we take very seriously here at the Western Railway Museum is to try to provide a number of connections for people when they come out.

You see grandparents interacting with their grandkids, and sharing a connection about what life in America was like when they were growing up.

And being able to share that and reflect that in their children's eyes.

Our ride is an amazingly fun, family friendly event.

The trip takes about 50 minutes and you actually ride aboard one of the historic restored streetcars or interurban cars that we have.

There are historic structures along the line such as Shiloh Church which served the local farming and agricultural community from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

You have beautiful Suisun Marsh, which is one of the largest wetlands in the nation.

Also at the other end of our line you have the Jepson Prairie, which is one of the last remnant prairies in California, where you'll see an untouched, unadulterated landscape.

What we'd really like people to learn while they're here at the museum is not just the physical history of the cars and where they were built which is important, but also the social history of how they helped America evolve in the early part of the 20th century.

Ancr: As we leave the Western Railway Museum, we can truly be thankful there are people who understand the importance of preserving such magical, mystical time machines.

Music Ancr: What happens when you've got a Dad with a passion for railroads and a Mom who happens to be a watercolor artist?

You get Mike Danneman - full-time freelance railroad artist and photographer.

Although Mike credits his folks for inspiring his career, it's easy to see that much of his success comes from self-motivation, hard work, and tons of talent.

From scenery for model railroads to acrylic paintings, book covers, articles, greeting cards, and calendars.

Mike's lifelong interest in trains has been unleashed through his eye for beauty.

In 1984, Mike got his first paycheck for pursuing his passion at Wisconsin based Kalmbach Publishing company.

An employee for eleven years, he started as an illustrator for Model Railroader and became the Art Director for Trains magazine.

The job not only fed Mike's train habit, it introduced a new love.. His wife Katie.

In search of fresh artistic pursuits, the two moved to Arvada, Colorado in 1997.

The move from an apartment to a home also meant more space, which allowed for more room for both of their hobbies.

Mike spends much of his spare time working with model railroads.

Because the old apartment was so small, his five by seven design was easy to move.

The N-scale Denver & Rio Grande Western layout is well on its way to becoming a new and improved Moffat Road.

And since it now fills a 25 by 19 foot space, it appears as if the Dannemans aren't planning on moving anytime in the near future.

Mike: Well the layout is easier to maintain and work on because of it's size.

I think a really huge layout would be a daunting task and to me this one is plenty big.

It gets a lot of what I want to portray in model railroading, it gets it accomplished.

Ancr: Right now the layout is shared by two of Mike's favorite railroad eras..

The early 60s, for being the heart of the industry.

and the early 80s, for the coal trains that he remembers as a kid.

At some point, he plans to separate the two time periods for better representation.

By not taking up the entire basement with track, Katie is able to use the 2nd room for her hobbies, or more appropriately, to keep them out of trouble.

Joey and Belle need their own bedroom to hinder them from going through Mike and Katie's, and stealing things of importance.

Mike does a fair amount of traveling in Canada and the United States in search of railroad photos.

Not only are the images reprinted in railroad calendars and books, but they also inspire themes for Mike's paintings and backdrops.

Mike: I'm able to go out and take photos of it.

I'm basing the layout on the prototype from Denver Union station to the Moffat Tunnel, so that gives me the ability to check it and take photos of it, and base my backdrop on it and the scenery on it.

And I'm modeling a prototype stretch of railroad, so that's helpful.

One of the easiest things I found was to go out and I actually photographed a series of panoramic views of the scenery just on regular print film.

I taped them together and was able to form a very long panoramic view that I was able to accurately reproduce on the backdrop.

Ancr: A recent effort for Mike is documenting the former Rio Grande engineers and crew members who still work the railroads out in Utah, which are now owned by Union Pacific.

Mike: I've been spending quite a few years now really inspired to go out and capture the last Rio Grande locomotives and people, especially the people.

I find that especially when you're hanging around with these guys long enough you start to be accepted as part of the crew in a way, and you're able to get good candid photos of people that you can't get if you just come in and try to take a photo of them.

Ancr: Although Mike's work is a beautiful tribute to the crew that have worked the railroad since the beginning, it's sad to think that, in the not so distant future, these images may be all that remains.

Mike: Railroads are constantly changing, and painting is a good way to capture those past moments.

Ancr: Mike's photographs and artwork may be the only way that the last of the Rio Grande, and the trains and people who guide them, will be able to keep on running.

Spencer: The museum has chosen to stick specifically with traction, and has thus carved a nice little niche for itself even though it is so close to the California State Railroad Museum.

That's it for this episode.

Be sure to join us next time for more, Tracks Ahead, Music Ancr: Tracks Ahead.

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And Garden Railways magazine, helping you take the fun of model trains outdoors.

Walthers, manufacturer and supplier of model railroading products; serving the hobby since 1932.

The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturers Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music